THE BEST:
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (1998)
When it comes to second-guessing the Oscars, few Best Pictures raise Hollywood’s hackles like Shakespeare in Love. The legend goes something like this: way back in 1998, Steven Spielberg’s brilliant war movie Saving Private Ryan was a cinch to win the top slot, but sometime between the announcement of nominations and the opening of envelopes, Bob and Harvey Weinstein (the evil geniuses behind Shakespeare’s Oscar campaign) flew the invisible Miramax blimp over Hollywood and fired their diabolical Hypno-Ray at the helpless population, thus forcing all the innocent Who’s Who down in Whoville to vote for the wrong movie. As John Foote posts at InContention.com (reflecting an apparently common consensus), “Is there anyone left out there who truly believes that Shakespeare in Love, a lovely film, was actually better than Saving Private Ryan?” Well...uh, yes, actually. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that Shakespeare in Love was MUCH better. Ryan, for all the slam-pow-gasp shock & awe chaos of its opening battle scene devolves shortly thereafter into a standard-issue World War II potboiler, circa 1952, complete with “Brooklyn,” “Redneck” and all the rest of the colorfully standard-issue Hollywood band of brothers fussin’ and fightin’ their way across Europe under the command of a tough but secretly tender-hearted father figure (played by a wildly miscast and completely unbelievable Tom Hanks). Shakespeare In Love, meanwhile, presented an Elizabethan world more fully-imagined than fellow Best Picture competitor Elizabeth, thanks to a remarkably literate and inventive screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. And, while it’s easy to mock the GOOP-tastic Gwyneth of today, Paltrow generated palpable chemistry with co-star Joseph Fiennes in a well told, old-school love story, surrounded by a flawless supporting cast, all of them at or near the top of their games. True, movies this smart don’t usually win Oscars...which is probably why so many Academy voters are still baffled by Shakespeare’s victory.
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